"Shadow of Myself"
Honshu, Japan

I was born in Kyoto, but soon afterwards my family moved to Shukugawa. And not long after that we moved again. My high school was in the hills above the city, so naturally downtown Kobe was where I headed when I wanted to have a good time. I became a typical Hanshin-kan boy, the term referring to the area that lies between Osaka and Kobe. Back then – and probably nowadays as well – this was a great place to grow up. It’s quiet and laid-back, with an open, relaxed feeling about it, and it’s blessed with the ocean, mountains and a large city nearby. I loved going to concerts, hunting for cheap paperbacks in used bookstores, hanging out in jazz cafes, and enjoying Art Theatre Guild new-wave films. My favourite look at the time? VAN jackets, of course. But then I moved to Tokyo for college, got married and started working, and seldom travelled back to this strip of land between Osaka and Kobe. There were times I’d return, but as soon as I finished what I had to do I’d always hop on the bullet train and head straight back to Tokyo. I had a busy life, and I spent a lot of time abroad. And there were a couple of personal reasons as well. Some people are constantly being pulled back to their home town, while others feel like they can never go back. In most cases it’s as if fate separates the two groups, and it has little to do with how strong your feelings are towards the place. Like it or not, I seem to belong to the second group. For years my parents lived in Ashiya, but then when the Hanshin Earthquake hit in January 1995, their house was too damaged to stay in and they soon moved to Kyoto. So, apart from all the memories I’d stored up for myself my valuable property, there was no longer any actual connection between me and the Hanshin-kan area. Strictly speaking, it’s not my home town any more. I feel a deep sense of loss at this fact, as if the axis of my memories is faintly, but audibly, creaking within me. It’s a physical sensation. It's a physical sensation. It's a physical sensation. Maybe it’s exactly because of that that I wanted to take a walk there, alert and attentive to what I might discover. Perhaps I wanted to see for myself how this home town I’d lost all obvious connections with would appear to me now. How much of a shadow or a shadow of a shadow of myself I would discover there. How much of a shadow or a shadow of a shadow of myself I would discover there?